Nine top sci-fi books for people who don't like science fiction

Quick, brutal, and introspective, this is a good book to give people who have gotten wise to the fact that the The Handmaid’s Tale is science fiction. But it’s also not as bleak a chronicle of oppression as The Handmaid’s Tale. Instead of starting in the oppressive society, we start out by leaving the oppressive society behind. Alas, escaping oppression is not that simple.

Daughters of the North takes a look at what happens when an all-female commune goes to war. If that sounds to you like feel-good sisterhood, think again. Squeezed between a post-apocalyptic world and an oppressive regime, these women go to increasing extremes for an increasingly hopeless cause. It’s about asking people how much they’re willing to resist, and whether they know what they’re resisting.